Howard, Phillies top Cardinals for 4th straight win

ST. LOUIS — Ryan Howard might not be the player he was in his prime. Perhaps that’s because he needs more games in Busch Stadium.

Thursday night the St. Louis native continued his surreal assault on his hometown team and on this stunning road trip, scorching an RBI single in the fourth inning and lofting a two-run homer to left in the sixth as the Phillies (33-38) opened a four-game series with the Cardinals with a 4-1 win, their fourth in a row and one that got them within four games of the division-leading Nationals.

It might seem four was the magic number, but the real mystical digit when the Phils go to St. Louis seems to be No. 6.

“He’s on a good roll for us,” Ryne Sandberg said of Howard. “He’s played big for us in the last four wins, putting crooked numbers ... He’s doing the job.”

Howard’s 14th homer of the season was a finesse shot, landing just over the fence and just inside the left-field foul pole. Lucky? Maybe a little. But that seems to be how he rolls in his hometown.

“I wasn’t sure if the ball was going to stay fair,” said Howard, who has lifted his OPS from .703 to .757 in the four games. “Off the bat it started to slice, and I wasn’t sure if it was going to go out. If it did stay fair I figured it was going to land or hit off the 336 (sign on the fence).

“I was a little surprised, but I’m not mad at it.”

Howard’s play in St. Louis is unprecedented. No player with at least 100 plate appearances in St. Louis has ever had an OPS as high as Howard’s 1.218 against the Cardinals. In 27 games he is batting .371 (69-for-186) with 10 home runs and 38 RBIs. Put those RBIs on a 162-game pace and it’s an absurd 228 in a season. Howard also had his fourth multi-RBI game in a row, has nine RBIs during the winning streak and has 50 for the season, ranking him third in the National League.

While Howard was supplying the pop, rookie David Buchanan was delivering a gorgeous performance against one of the hottest teams in baseball. The right-hander worked seven scoreless innings out of the gate and only lost the shutout when, after a long top half of the eighth, he had control trouble and gave up a two-out RBI single to Matt Carpenter.

But for a rookie making his sixth big-league start, it was a display of aggression and coolness under pressure that Sandberg sensed the kid had when he impressed in the spring.

“I think he rose to the occasion,” Sandberg said of Buchanan. “I think he has that kind of makeup and that kind of character. He seems to be showing improvement. He seems to be adjusting as he’s gone along and it looks like he’s growing out there. He’s coming along real good.”

When Sandberg went out to get Buchanan after Carpenter’s hit, his starter apologized for the leadoff walk he allowed. Yet it was Sandberg who started up the steps after that, then decided to let the rookie keep working and get two outs before losing the shutout.

“I’ve been wanting to go deep into games to help the team out and not always have the bullpen get nervous,” Buchanan said. “I was upset with the leadoff walk in the eighth, but that happens.”

“I thought he did great,” Howard said of Buchanan. “He executed his game plan, hit his spots, got out of a couple situations and avoided a lot of situations. Anytime you can do that it’s going to be a good night.

“This entire stretch of a road trip, starting in Atlanta and coming here, it’s two really tough ball clubs. For him to come out, especially in St. Louis, where it’s not an easy place to come in and do well, yet he did just that.”

Jake Diekman came in for Buchanan and got the final out of the eighth and Jonathan Papelbon worked a 1-2-3 ninth for his 17th save.

The Phils did take another physical hit when Reid Brignac suffered a high ankle sprain when Cardinals pitcher Shelby Miller dopily slid into the first-base bag as he covered on a Brignac grounder. The Phils’ infielder had no choice but to slide himself and jammed his foot badly into the bag.

Brignac will have the ankle reevaluated Friday, but judging from the swelling he probably needs a couple of weeks to recover.

Jimmy Rollins continued his bizarre one-hit hitting streak, extending it to 13 games with a single in the third inning. It’s the longest run of one-hit games in Phillies’ history and is three games shy of tying the major-league record of 16 by Ted Sizemore when he was with the Cardinals in 1975.